Obsolete Media Reassessed

New media age fast.

Technologies outpace each another in rapid turns and confront us constantly with new challenges - not just in everyday life but also in art. It only takes a few years, until communication technologies, devices, user interfaces and technical standards are out-dated.

They become obsolete, and what has been produced by applying them can hardly be used anymore. Especially in sound art people tend to have an ambivalent relationship with their technical equipment. It varies between dependency, misappropriation and nostalgic vintage romantics.

The exhibition “Presence and Disappearance” takes a closer look on this phenomenas by creating a space of experience on a nature site with several instalallative works.

Alisa Kobzar‘s sound installation in the trees is inspired by the idea of „network“ in both an ecological and technological sense. The artist collective RaumZeitPiraten honor the Walkman, status symbol of Generation X, by upcycling it as solar-powered sound object in the old greenhouse.

From the 1940s to the 1970s, lenticular prints were very fashionable as 3D tilt-up pictures in postcard format. With this technique Verena Mayrhofer creates a large-scale abstract work. Arnold Haberl uses two discarded satellite dishes to give visitors the possibility for an intimate conversation with spatial distance without any electronic support.

At Clubnach / mittag on September 16, the audience is invited to participate - the Klub Montage strikes out for a vintage electronic jam session.

For one day Elisabeth Schimana sets up her installation Memory Canon with various historical playback devices for obsolete storage media. Tapes are also very important for the musician Marie Vermont who will play a concert at the end.

Big thanks to the team at Lames, who create and maintain this special place and therefor make this event possible.

Christine Schörkhuber
Curator | IMA Institute of Media Archaeology